


Into the Water

by Rivehn



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:47:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28213389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivehn/pseuds/Rivehn
Summary: Chihiro comes home, it takes a while before she's truly home though. For what is a home without the one you love most...
Relationships: Haku | Nigihayami Kohakunushi/Ogino Chihiro
Comments: 5
Kudos: 107





	Into the Water

Chihiro doesn’t lose her memories. She doesn’t know if it is because she truly believes in spirits. Maybe the still gently gleaming purple tie in her hair protects her. She bows before every shrine and statue, politely greets every spirit touched place with a reverent bow. They are real, and she respects them. 

She talks to the spiders as she carries them outside whenever her shrieking mother alerts her to their presence. She sprinkles star candies in her room and the soot in the corners is a thick lightless black. If it ever happens to move in the corner of her eyes she only smiles. Her room never gets dirty, her floor gleams, and no trace of the star candy which she scatters every morning and every night, ever turns up.

She plants flowers and herbs and slowly, the figures dancing at the edge of her vision grow clearer. Little gleaming precious stones appear in the water dark soil as the plants grow in healthy and strong. Little spirits appear clearer and clearer and bow to her before disappearing again into the little archway that simply appeared one day.

Her room is her sanctuary, and because she invites all kami into her heart, more spirit-touched by the day.

* * *

Eventually her parents badger her into telling her story. “Why do you bow for every shrine? We aren’t religious.” Her father mentions one day. It hasn’t escaped Chihiro’s gaze that her parents had never again touched pork, but it seems to be a subconscious decision.

“I believe in spirits.” She states calmly. The proof is everywhere, and  Zeniiba -baa- chan's spell still surrounds her in love.

Yuuko raises a surprised eyebrow. “Why?” “Because I know they are all real.” Chihiro answers, slightly nervous. She doesn’t want to lie to them, they are her parents. Still... she knows they don’t remember anything at all. She spent three months in the spirit world, but three days had gone by in the mundane world. Her parents had simply... ignored the strange flow of time.

Akio had laughed uncomfortably when they arrived at a dark house fully furnished with their belongings, and Yuuko had simply waved off any questions, mentioning only that they must have gotten the moving date confused.

Chihiro takes a deep breath... and she tells her story to someone for the first time.

* * *

Curled up on the stairs, Chihiro stares blankly ahead. She can hear her parents arguing. “She obviously needs help  Akio, she actually believes in spirits. She’s ten, far too old for make believe.” Yuuko exclaims shrilly. “Now now, let’s not be hasty. Maybe she’ll grow out of it. Chihiro has always been a good girl.” Akio’s low voice adds slowly. He’s unnerved, and her mother is anxious.

It hurts, the knowledge that they lied straight to her face when they said they believed in her is slicing deep into her open and soft heart.

She curls tighter, into a ball, and she cries. Slowly her legs are covered in tiny black sooth balls, and their wide eyes stare up at her sadly. For the first time the sweet soot balls don’t stay on the edge of her vision and a watery smile appears on her face slowly, as she gently pets the little fluffy soot ball perching on her knee.

She falls into an exhausted sleep when she finally drags herself back to her room. When she wakes up she’s covered in a blanket she’s never seen before, one glimmering in aqua shades.

* * *

Blankly Chihiro stares at the woman across from her. Plastic smiles had greeted her that morning, as her parents ushered her to the car for a “very important meeting”.

She looks severe, possessing black hair and black eyes and a stern expression which makes her seem very unapproachable. “Do you understand why you are here?” She asks seriously, voice hard and  clearly, she isn’t going to tolerate any nonsense. “Because my parents are worried.” She answers truthfully. 

“No, it is because you are telling lies.” The woman states harshly and Chihiro can’t  breath . The space is dead. The walls are a clinical white, the air she breathes in is crushingly still and the plastic chair are very uncomfortable. No god has touched this room in a long  long time and it creates a very unfortunate atmosphere for the sensitive spirit-touched girl.

At the end of the hour Chihiro is ushered outside while the woman talks to her parents. Chihiro’s breath is still enough that she hears every word. “I’d advise medication. Her delusion is deep-seated and Chihiro- chan is stubborn.” It feels like being betrayed. Knives of insidious lies spearing her through her back and it hurts so bad...

If the psychologist also suffers from every minor accident under the sun in the weeks that follow, she totally ignores that, it can’t possibly be related after all. But Chihiro hides a tiny smile when she once again sees mud caking her pretty delicate stockings.

After the medication, Chihiro stops fighting. She hurts, and she lies. Her smiles are like a porcelain mask to don at her leisure. Her tears are spilled into rivers and earth but never again at home.

She lies to her parents, her psychologist and her classmates.

She crushes the hated medication and pretends to swallow the pills. Her parents smile happily, she’s a little quiet now, but she’s improving right?

Chihiro slowly, achingly slowly, stops talking at all. She never mentions Haku again. Her parents are overjoyed and think she’s getting better. They don’t realise that truly it is a lack of trust which stays her tongue.

The brunette hides the medication behind her teeth, letting the river behind their house take the chemicals away. She offers freshly made onigiri and a single cup of sake every week to the river-goddess, for the inconvenience. In response, the medication glimmers strangely as soon as it hits the water, vanishing in green spirals of light beneath the waves.

Chihiro bows before the little stream bed. It’s an off-shoot of a powerful long river. “Arigatou, Hime-kawa.” She murmurs gently. She sets the newest offerings down gently along the bank. A soft warm kiss is pressed to her brow. Chihiro smiles softly through her tears and catches a glimpse of a glowing woman, long hair drifting through the air in serpentine waves as if it were water instead.

* * *

Chihiro grows older, fourteen, fifteen then sixteen years old. She has friends, but she only ever meets them at school or at the mall. Casual acquaintances at best really. She smiles and they talk about magazines and bands, boys and homework.

It’s like a thin pane of glass, separating her from everyone else. She sees differently now. Chihiro  ** believes ** , and that... that changes everything. She doesn’t invite her friends to her home.

Instead Chihiro makes little offerings for the forgotten shrines in her spare time. She cycles out to the country side and cleans the ancient stone statues and plants flowers around the road side tiny stone houses of the kami. The other teens in her class laugh at her. It’s not a spiteful laugh, but they do think she’s silly. And yet, it doesn’t go unnoticed. Her offerings and steady faith and the polite bow she gives to every spirit touched place she crosses gained her very real attention from the other side.

A beautiful flower settles gently into her hair one day, as if gifted by the wind. Old glimmering coins appear on her little desk. It only rains when she has an umbrella, and whatever she loses, her belongings always find their way back to her. 

Her purple hair tie glimmers in her dark hair. Come rain or sun, that little tie taming her dark  dark locks never stops shimmering. It's eerie, but Chihiro only smiles if someone asks, it’s a bittersweet expression, older than it has any right to be.

“Sweetheart, you know that this Spirit World of yours, none of it... none of it is real. You know this right?” And Akio says this gently to his daughter, as if what he is saying isn’t slowly cutting him off of his daughter. As if his utter lack of faith in her isn’t hurting her.

Chihiro looks up at him blankly, a perfect untouched white flower tucked gently into her hair and eyes dark and so so far away... “It was all real.” She says the words defiantly, angrily hoping to make him see, to make her parents believe in her for once. To make them listen. A final try to reach them.

She’s only a teenager though, and as adults her parents don’t even entertain the thought that they might be wrong.

The shades and shadows grow to be clear, and every day she is lucky in some way. She makes charms and amulets and never gets sick. Chihiro never falls, never so much as skins her knees again, despite the near reckless climbing she often indulges in. She whispers to the rivers and the clouds and climbs trees to watch the sunset.

If she stumbles, ghostly hands correct her stance lightly. Voices start murmuring to her, clearer every day. All the voices she knows and many she doesn’t recognise. Except for the one voice she misses the most.

* * *

She paints scenes of the Spirit World on her walls. Scrolls and old paintings simply appear one day. Little nature spirits linger in her plants and flowers, dryads born from the bonsai trees. Her bedroom eventually... shifts, sideways. Half real, half spirit. It’s a comfortable place for her, but her parents ultimately stop entering at all. They never again step foot in her room, instinctively avoiding the space.

The archway grows, until it covers an entire wall. It’s an intricate wooden piece, a shimmering curtain gently waving in a non-existent breeze lingers in the opening. Spirits pass through now, her room becomes a waystation to other places and realms. 

She brews teas and listens to their stories. Offers candy or sake to her visitors and occasionally tells her own stories. In return many leave small keepsakes behind. A string of glass pieces, which she hangs in her window to glitter in the light. A tiny ring from a water-spirit which she wears around her pinkie finger. Her room grows, until her bed is separated by a new wall to give her privacy if she wishes for it.

Her windowsill also grows, until a warm wooden seat is created, where she takes her tea in the morning. 

Zeniiba -baa- chan appears one morning, and tells her over tea how all of her friends are doing. She smiles when she leaves. “You’ve created a beautiful way-point Chihiro-chan.”

She wonders almost sadly where Haku is, but she still believes in him and knows that if he could, he would have visited by now.

* * *

She tries to find the place where she’d fallen into him as a child but... The Kohaku river she swam in as a child doesn’t exist anymore. The riverbed has dried out completely, the water is... gone. She wonders what happened. Slowly starts to obsess over it.

She goes to the library and takes out maps, fifty of them, one for every year, spanning from old crumbling parchment carefully tucked away in between plastic sheets to a newer edition printed on a laminated type of paper.

She looks at the pictures of the river he used to be, Kohaku was evermoving and wide. A long powerful river with banks sloping gently. Haku was... beautiful.

It takes her months of work, to trace the minute flows over the old land maps. To map out how the river changed and where the water has gone. What she finds out saddens her...

There is a dam near his source, and the dam is old. The beds of the Kohaku river are all but dried out. All that remains is a blocked-in reservoir. Chihiro wonders what happened to all the places where Kohaku used to flow. She traces the spaces over the maps and finds... nothing.

Nothing was ever built on any of the long stretches of earth where he used to be. Frowning she dives deeper into the mystery. Tracing through the obscene amount of legal paper to find that multiple complexes were expected on his shores, but all of them were shut down for... vague reasons.

From what she can find, workers always came back dazed and without any knowledge of how they got there. Materials disappeared, money was lost and eventually people just... stopped trying.

As far as Chihiro can tell, Haku’s river is dammed in, but the riverbeds still remain, dried out cracking clay still shaped with his banks just... parched. If she can break the wall, it should set him free and it shouldn’t flood anyone either...

She starts planning.

* * *

At age 18, she graduates high school. She searches for a home close to the dam. When word reaches her of a cheap apartment which is supposedly ‘haunted’ she applies straight away. She doesn’t fear the Spirit World at all after all. She feels safe with  Kaonashi lingering near and even  Yubaba visits now, growing steadily kinder as Boh grows into a sweet young child. He reigns in his mother and visits his aunt and creates a bridge between them. 

There are no other applicants, so the apartment is hers immediately. She has just enough money saved up to pay for three months upfront, but she’ll need to find a job once she has moved. She already longs to be near the Kohaku river. Dammed in or not, it is the only real trace of him in this world and it has been eight years now. She misses him almost desperately.

She’d been ten, hadn’t even really known what love was, but she had given him her heart anyway.

The archway that had graced her room years ago disappears as soon as her belongings begin migrating to boxes. The spirits fade away in the blink of an eye, the magic of a halfway point fading out around her. Her gifts remain though, glittering peacefully in the sun. 

When she packs up her plants, the miniature nature fairies burrow into the earth to sleep through the rough handling of their respective pieces of nature. The dryads fade into the solid tiny trunks of the bonsais she still keeps. Soot gathers in inky black splotches, pouring themselves into her eccentric mismatched teacups to accompany her to her new home. 

When her room is once more identical to the way she found it years ago she nods to her parents. She enters her second-hand car, an almost suspiciously cheap yet well maintained vehicle, and waves gently as she drives away with boxes filling the backseat. She loves her parents, even if she no longer trusts them. The faith in them grinded away between a cold as ice office and chemicals meant to taint her blood.

* * *

She walks slowly through her new apartment. It’s positively tiny. There is only one room with a kitchenette in one corner. There is an inbuilt closet and there are wide window sills. Her bathroom is barely big enough to fit her and Chihiro had never grown up very much. 

She’s short with waist long hair and her face never quite changed, her eyes still wide with wonder.

Still, she sees a little girl with red marring her dress and knows, down to her bones that this is why everyone else left. “Hi. I’m the new tenant. Is it okay if I come to live here with you?” She asks gently, bowing politely before the small child spirit. The girl nods, awkwardly bowing back before shyly fading from sight.

Kaonashi makes a small noise as he sets down a box. He’s an old, old spirit and staying with  Zeniiba had only made him stronger. Manifesting in the real world is hard for ghosts and spirits, fairies and gods, but it’s far from impossible. Especially not near Chihiro. She believes in them, and her deep everlasting faith makes it easier to cross over to her side.

She hangs the string of coloured glass before the window. Folds her futon and gently places it into the closet. Her mismatched teacups grace the old shelves of the ancient kitchenette and she laughs as the soot flees to the dark corners of the room. 

She takes a break from unpacking, scattering a smattering of star candy along the floor as she goes. She watches in quiet delight as the soot gathers around the squirm happily all over her new floor, quickly gathering the little stars to their furry little bodies.

She looks around and decides on a spot near the window. She presses her hands to the wall and thinks of  Zeniiba ,  Yubaba and Rin, Boh and Kamaji and most of all Haku. The archway fades easily into existence and the rest of the old paintings and the  wall scrolls , the delicate silk tapestries and old wobbly mismatched chair, it all appears slowly.

Ghostly faded at first and then rapidly springing into existence. As real and solid as she is.

She looks around her home, tiny and eccentric and filled with flowers and plants. She loves it, she loves the spirits who all appear to look around cheerfully, curious over her new home, even more. She goes to bed that night content, in the morning she will go to Kohaku’s beginning, and she will do anything she can to save him, but for tonight, she sleeps.

* * *

Chihiro takes a job at the tiny flower shop in town. She brings back fresh flowers for the little girl who died at her home and the shy spirit gradually appears sooner and sooner. The flowers for her cheer her up and the old blood caked in her dress slowly dissolves. 

She helps customers and brings tiny offerings for the newly born spirits in the shop. The flowers and plants are all healthier for her presence. Gleaming verdant leaves and colourful petals burst into being.

With every customer she somehow just knows what they need. She can almost feel who should go home with them. 

With rent taken care of and settled in at her new job she turns her attention to the dam. 

It’s an old stone work and almost beautiful in its austerity. It’s starting to crumble and the water churning behind the barrier is emerald green and almost seething. Angrily frothing in its stone-cold prison.

The next time she brings along a hammer that is lighter than it has any right to be and sweet green apples which aren’t in season at all.

The locals watch, wide-eyed, as the strange newcomer makes trips out to the cursed dam, over and over again. She never becomes lost and she never loses even a single memory. The people watch in weary awe as she comes back smiling sadly, but with clear dark eyes. 

Chihiro starts chipping away at the old stone work, trying to break the water free by force if she has to. It’s backbreaking work. She gets tired and even her bones ache but she never complains. She just keeps coming back, over and over again.

Chihiro goes home to a warm apartment filled with spirits passing by and a little girl who looks happier with every passing day. When she eventually moves on in a white halo, she waves at the child and is glad that she never listened to her parents at all. 

* * *

It’s icy cold outside, the ground is white with frost and the snows fall from fat heavy clouds. Chihiro is once again at the dam, smashing her hammer into the structure with what feels like no result at all when it finally happens.

She smashes her hammer into the stone hard, for a single moment all is quiet. Then, there is a cracking sound, old and hollow and almost pained as the crack spirals deeper into the stone and suddenly water is everywhere. 

It springs free from the reservoir and gushes out onto the cracked earth. It’s only a small stream bed, but the heavy sound of falling water and the cool mist in the air is like a siren song calling her name and without a second thought she strips naked and wades into the newly sprung stream.

She sinks under the water in the middle of the winter and it is warm. “Chihiro...” He calls her name and the faint tenor of his voice is curling around the shell of her ear delicately. Happy tears join the river and the water brushes faintly along her lashes, as if telling her not to cry, that it is alright now.

She can’t see him, can’t hear anything but the faint call of her name but it is unmistakably him. Haku.

It’s been nine years now, but the sweet sound of his voice still touches her heart, exactly as it did all those years ago.

* * *

She still comes every day, after work. Her fingers stained with dark earth, packed soil beneath her fingernails. There are green leaves lingering in her dark tresses and Chihiro is home now. Her apartment and the tiny store. The Kohaku river so close by. She fits here, in a way she never quite did in her childhood home after the months she spent in the spirit world.

She works away at the dam, taking a hammer to the stone holding him down. The man-made structure is holding him prison and it hurts somewhere deep inside of her.

When the river starts to swell with water she smiles straight through her deliriously happy tears. She hears the sweet whisper of his voice. When he first reaches out to touch her, she almost thinks she imagines it, desperate for another sign of him, but there is no mistaking the gentle hands ghosting along her side. It’s not a solid touch and his voice is too faint for her to make out anything but her name, but every day she sinks into his river, and every day he comes to her stronger. 

Eventually she can hear him, clear as day. As if he was standing right next to her now. “Chihiro... you found me and you saved me.” There is something almost unbearably fond in that aristocratic pure voice. “Thank you. Truly, honestly, thank you so much.” 

* * *

Every day she removes another stone, breaks another part of the wall down to help him. Every night she floats inside of him. Gentle hands slowly, delicately begin skating along the underside of her bosom. They hold her hips tightly. His voice curls around her sweetly and she breathes in the water but never drowns. They are only faint touches, as if silk is whispering over her skin instead of solid skin and bones, but they matter and she can feel him again.

Winter fades into spring and spring into summer until one day the tenuous balance between water and stone shifts. She swings her hammer one last time. The stones crack  crack crack at her feet, the river rages and suddenly the water crushes the stone wall utterly. A raging full river floods into the dried-out riverbed and the wall is gone.

The little stream expands, the river grows swollen, immense blue smears out over the landscape until the old banks are swallowed beneath the raging power of a full ancient river.

And suddenly he is there. “Chihiro...” He murmurs, and strong pale arms wind around her as real as she is. She leans against the strong pale chest and he is older now. Exactly the same age as she is, just like he was all those years ago.

Cold soaked pale lips press against her sweet pink lips and she opens her mouth for him. Their tongues tangle in a heated kiss and Chihiro is happy.

He can leave his river now and he does. He follows her home, marvelling over the beautiful space and the many friendly faces. She still scatters star candy every morning and every night. She waters the little nature fairies who live in her plants and brews tea for the spirits passing through. She can see how it wears on him though, to be away from his only newly restored domain.

So every day she takes a cup or a glass full of emerald green water to her apartment, until every surface is full of glass jars, cups and metal pans, all glimmering with the green colour that matches his eyes.

Haku watches in wonder as she carries back more and more of his river water. Every spare container is filled and she only ever brings the water back when it doesn’t shine green anymore.

It only makes him love her more.

Haku fits into her life as if there was a space left open especially for him. In a way this is true, because her heart has belonged to the river-god since she was only ten.

Chihiro lives her life half in this world, half in the spirit world. It suits them. 

She isn’t the type of person to spend every waking moment at his side. She journeys over old country lanes, leaving flowers and offerings in her wake to the little shrines she finds. Blows new faith into old abandoned spaces.

She brews tea for the ones passing through her gate and she plants flowers and sells plants in the small-town flower shop. She’s happy.

But every single night, it is him she returns to. 

Haku himself is often gone for long hours, drifting along the newly restored rushing miles of water. Embedding himself back into his river, caring delicately and  dutifully to his domain. But he always returns to her side. Chihiro saved him, in ways he hadn’t even known he’d needed to be saved.

* * *

Chihiro-san is a strange woman. She moved in years ago and ever since there has been a steady stream of tiny miracles following her around. 

Susune doesn’t know much about her, her neighbour is for all of her open and kind ways actually fairly reticent about herself.

She only knows what the supposedly haunted apartment looked like because Chihiro had invited her in after a rainstorm once. She’d had an incredibly bad day, she’d been fired, then her car had broken down. While she was walking towards the entrance of the building her heel had broken off, she’d stumbled and skinned both her knees open.

It had been too much, she’d just sat there, in the middle of large puddle of dirty rain water, crying. Chihiro had come by at just the right time, had taken one look at her and promptly kneeled in front of her.

She had gently taken of both of her shoes, and then pulled her to her feet. She had simply wrapped an arm around her, and gently ushered her into her home.

Chihiro-san had a lovely home, full of many unique artifacts and art pieces. There was one strange thing though, on almost every surface there were beautiful crystal vases, little silver jugs, eccentric teacups and earthen mugs in beautiful colours. All of them filled with glimmering green river water.

Susune had sat in the chair she’d been gently pushed into, somewhat dazed. Chihiro had deposited a delicate china teacup full of warm but bitter tea in her hands and then she had settled into the chair across from her.

She hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even really looked at her, but her quiet companionship and the gentle way she’d been welcomed into her home had meant the world to her. A soft woollen blanket had been wrapped around her legs and she had eventually been sent home with a warm meal.

The next day her shoes had been left on her doorstep, heel once again unbroken. A small charm had accompanied the unexpected gift. It fairly glowed in the light and  Susune had smiled at the kind gesture, thinking that it was a lovely gesture.

After that afternoon, everything somehow turned around for her. She’d found a new, better, job. Had met and fallen in love with a kind man from the building and in the back of her mind she had wondered... 

She still kept that good luck charm, it hung in her window pride of place, and if she once again believed in magic... Well, that was her business.

* * *

Chihiro stepped through the entrance, clicking the lock shut behind her. “Welcome home.” Haku murmured lowly, wrapping her into a tight embrace as soon as he reached her. 

Chihiro smiled gently. “Tadaima.” She glanced up at him, and he leaned towards her for a gentle kiss. She could almost feel the rushing water brushing her cheek, his lips cold but gentle.

“Are you happy Chihiro?” He asked slowly. He couldn’t marry  her, he didn’t even officially exist in modern day Japan. He couldn’t offer to stay with her all of the time either, his river called him away, sometimes for long days at a time. He would probably never understand her life completely...

Chihiro only looked up at him sweetly, it was as if she could read his mind. “Always, I’m always happy so long as I get to see you again.” She answered back, and she stepped closer to wrap him up in a hug.

Chihiro was human warmth and kindness and a sweet fiery madness that he hadn’t ever understood as a cold-water river. Haku nodded and pressed another loving kiss to her tempting pink lips, she was perfect. 


End file.
